Congolese candidate who died on polling day wins vote, party says

Congolese opposition party presidential candidate Guy-Brice Parfait Kolelas – who died of Covid-19 on election day last month – said on Saturday that his own results showed he had in fact won the vote.

The President of the Republic of Congo, Denis Sassou Nguesso, in power for 36 years, was re-elected on March 21 with 88.57% of the vote, according to the Minister of the Interior, citing figures from the electoral commission.

The vote was boycotted by the main opposition and polling day was overshadowed by the shock death of Kolelas – Sassou Nguesso’s only big rival.

The provisional results announced by the Minister of the Interior gave Kolelas only 7.84% of the vote.

But his party, the Union of Democratic Humanists, or UDH-Yuki, said on Saturday that its own partial results compiled from polling stations showed Kolelas winning 64 percent of the vote against Sassou Nguesso’s 31 percent.

The UDH-Yuki and the party of another opposition candidate, Mathias Dzon, have lodged an appeal with the country’s constitutional court, which is expected to render a decision within the week.

“The political bureau of the UDH-Yuki invites the constitutional court to interpret the law and therefore to pronounce the outright annulment of the provisional results of the poll,” said party spokesman Lucrece Nguedi.

He added that the last elections “were again only an electoral hold-up against the backdrop of a big masquerade”.

Kolelas, 61, was evacuated to France on election day for treatment, but died on the plane just five minutes after landing in Paris.

A Paris court said a criminal investigation had been opened into the cause of death, but following an autopsy it confirmed it was compatible with coronavirus contamination.

Last month’s vote marks the fourth electoral victory since 2002 for Sassou Nguesso, a former paratrooper who first came to power in 1979.

He served three presidential terms until he was forced to introduce multiparty elections in 1991 and was defeated at the polls the following year.

But he returned to power in 1997 after a protracted civil war.